Frank Rineck, a fourth-year theatre arts student in his last semester at UW-Eau Claire, was excited that he and his friend were cast to act side by side as the lead roles in upcoming university play. They researched the play and their characters, preparing for their roles. 

Weeks went by as they got closer to starting rehearsals. Then one day, Rineck opened his phone to see an email from the university.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Renick said, looking at his phone in disbelief.

He learned that day that UW-Eau Claire would be temporarily moving classes online because of the coronavirus pandemic, and his last show on the university stage would not be happening.

“It was surreal,” Rineck said.

In March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic put the world on pause for the foreseeable future. Orders around the country called for citizens to quarantine and schools to stop in-person instruction. This in turn meant the sudden end of a production that was getting ready to take off.

UW-Eau Claire’s music and theatre arts department will be starting its spring semester with a mainstage production of “A Doll’s House,” four years after it was supposed to be put on. Originally written by Henrick Isben and debuted in 1879, this classic play will finally be making its 2024 debut on the UW-Eau Claire stage.

“We were cast, designs done, about ready to go into rehearsal. All systems go,” said Arthur Grothe, artistic director of theatre and theatre professor at UW-Eau Claire. “We were excited about the cast of people and then had to pull the plug.” 

Grothe was the director for the show back in 2020 and is picking it back up for the upcoming season. 

“There was, at the time, so much upheaval and so much we didn’t know,” Grothe said. “Things were changing day to day. We couldn’t pull that together.”

Amanda Profaizer, theatre professor specializing in costume design at UW-Eau Claire, was the costume designer for the show in 2020 and is working for this upcoming production as well. 

“I was actually in LA shopping fabric … We woke up on Thursday morning ready to go shopping and that’s when the governor of [California] said they were shutting down the schools in LA,” Profaizer said. 

The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 claimed the lives of 350,000 people in the United States alone. On an individual scale, the pandemic caused the upheaval of many people’s daily lives. For students like Renick, who was cast as Torvald in the show, it claimed the rest of his senior year.

“We were planning these roles for a year,” Renick said. “It was almost harder to have it happen like that … It was nice that Arthur was trying to get something to work, but it just didn’t happen.”

Grothe said “A Doll’s House” was “ground-breaking” at its time because of its focus on issues with how women are treated and societal expectation placed on them through the eyes of the main character, Nora. 

“Nora at the beginning of the play is in a very disenfranchised place,” Grothe said. “She can’t have bank accounts in her own name. She can’t conduct business without her husband’s consent … She had to do all this on the sly to save her family — to save her husband.”

With the results of the election this past Tuesday and a second Donald Trump presidency approaching, women’s rights are a topic on many people’s minds. Grothe said this play’s subject matter comes at a very poignant time in American history after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) overturned the access to abortion established in Roe v. Wade (1973).

“I think an audience today looks at that and could probably easily draw some parallels to things that exist currently in our society and that are causing problems,” Grothe said.

This production takes place in the 1950s, as opposed to the play’s original setting in the 1880s. 

Grothe said that approaching the show four years later “gets at several of the same issues and questions that were relevant to the 1950s that were just as relevant in the 1880s.” 

“That’s what made [Torvald] so fascinating,” Renick said. “I think he represents modern white men, where they’re maybe not bad guys but they’re not very good at being challenged.”

The play challenges gender norms and provides a story that can be seen in many ways when compared to modern day.

“My mom was a 1950s wife,” Profaizer said.  “My mom couldn’t take out large sums of money without my father’s permission. So I kind of like the fact that we’re going to be able to [do this production], especially in today’s climate. It’s going to be exciting.”

UW-Eau Claire’s production of “A Doll’s House” will open on Feb. 28, 2025 in Riverside Theater. 

Agbara can be reached at [email protected].